I like a happy ending as much as the next guy, unless the next guy happens to like happy endings more than me. But as much as I root for one here, it sort of feels cheap to me if everyone has their cake and eats it too. If Okarin is happy, Kurisu survives and she and Okarin are together, Mayushi lives, there's no WW III and no dystopia - well, that's great and all. But shouldn't there be some sort of lasting cost to all this time meddling - something that can't be erased by further time time meddling?

Again, I love these characters and I'm neither rooting for tragedy or assuming the above "everybody wins" scenario is already locked in. But S;G has generally played by the literary rules so far, and if does work out that way it feels just a little like cheating to me.